The Edinburgh Fringe shows taking human trafficking as a theme

Roadkill and Lost Boy amongst Fringe shows telling refugees' stories

It is the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprise and the hottest topic on the Fringe. Why, wonders Mark Fisher, is everyone talking about human trafficking?

A celebrity endorsement works wonders for your box office and all power to Shatterbox for getting Emma Thompson to put her name to its production of Fair Trade. But that show is only the most high profile in an unprecedented wave of Fringe productions dealing with the subject of human trafficking.

The theme is so prevalent, it has even spilled over into the comedy programme. Irish stand-up Keith Farnon has previously taken on the American death penalty in Cruel and Unusual and racism in No Blacks. No Jews. No Dogs. No Irish. All Welcome … Now he is discussing the ‘value of women in society’ in Sex Traffic – How Much is that Woman in the Window? which promises to see the funny side of the connection between trafficking and society’s commodification of women.

From Cora Bissett, a leading light on the Scottish stage, Roadkill is an attempt to remind us how commonplace trafficking has become. By staging her play in an ordinary apartment to an audience of 12, she makes the point that a phenomenon that seems so alien could be taking pace in the flat next door. ‘It’s not screaming out like a brothel, with a light outside, it could be happening on anybody’s street, on your street, and you wouldn’t know,’ she told The List in June.

As well as the trade in women for sex, there is a lucrative market in trafficked children. That is an issue picked up by two youth theatres on the Fringe. In All the Queen’s Children, the socially motivated Nothing to Declare company, working in association with Reading Youth Theatre, considers the movement of young people in all directions around the world. On the one hand are the child refugees, making perilous journeys into the UK before disappearing from care homes; on the other hand are the naïve gap-year students who find themselves groomed by traffickers abroad.

Meanwhile in Lost Boy (formerly Tunde), students at Park View Academy in north London tell the story of former pupil Tunde Jaji who, as a child, was taken from his home in Nigeria and made to work as a domestic servant for a woman in Harringay. Now 24 and a gifted animator, Jaji has lived to tell the tale, but only after years of trauma. You don’t need to guess why, under ‘political views’ on his Facebook page, he has written: ‘be as free as the clouds’.

So how to explain the upsurge in trafficking plays? Like the trade itself, it is related to our increasing ability to travel great distances and our awareness of inequalities of wealth, particularly since the collapse of the USSR. Playwrights cannot ignore the world’s fastest growing criminal industry, one that, according to a 2004 United Nations report, generates between $5b and $9b a year.

That is a theme picked up by California’s Belleherst Productions in See Me! Hear Me! The multimedia play is about a fictional economics professor who sets out to write a book about global capitalism only to realise one of the prime generators of wealth is human slavery. The story ventures to Poland, Berlin, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Dubai, Uganda, Haiti and New York in its attempt to make sense of an industry that claims 27m victims worldwide.

Another reason the issue has come into focus are the news reports about the proliferation of prostitution during international sporting events. ‘In 2012 the Olympics are coming over here and a lot of people are getting very worried about how much sex trafficking is going to increase in this country,’ says Anna Holbek, co-writer of Fair Trade, which is based on the stories of Elena and Samai, two women trafficked into Britain. ‘Stats show that around the area of the Olympic arena, prostitution generally – and most likely trafficked women – has increased two-fold since last year. In South Africa they had a huge surge in trafficking in connection with people coming over for the World Cup. That’s expected to happen in the UK as well. For us, it’s trying to use theatre to raise awareness of that.’

Using a lively mix of theatre techniques – both comic and serious – Fair Trade avoids hectoring the audience even as it raises awareness of a distressing issue. ‘Emma Thompson came to the Q&A session on the first night and she asked for a show of hands from people who felt they had learnt a new piece of information,’ says Holbek. ‘It was unanimous. The whole room came up with different things they were just shocked about.’

Zoe Mavroudi, echoing the theme of Keith Farnon’s stand-up show, argues that trafficking is related to attitudes towards women in general. Her play Beauty is Prison Time takes a wry – even farcical – look at the annual beauty contest in UF-91/9, a real-life Siberian female prison, and makes the connection between such pageants and a world that trades in women’s looks.

‘There’s a tremendous irony, of course, in the premise of a beauty pageant in a prison, but also in the way Russia, of all the source countries of trafficking and prostitution, used to be an empire very recently,’ says the New York actor and writer. ‘The system collapses and the women start going away to their former enemies to work as strippers or whatever else. It’s a sign that whole countries can use their women as a natural resource.

‘The prison beauty contest was a good setting for a theme about how women historically have been seen as available for sale because they are desirable. I’m not comparing myself with women who are going through these things, but it is true of all women, in our own lives and the way we are portrayed in the media, that beauty is a form of imprisonment. If a woman is beautiful she can be owned. That mentality fuels the more legitimate aspects of the entertainment industry and also the porn industry and the sex trade. I do think there is a connection between all of these things and my play does walk that contentious line.’

Inspired by verbatim accounts of two survivors of the sex slave trade, Shatterbox has produced a dynamic and visceral piece of theatre combining drama, music, physical theatre and comedy. Directed by Lotte Wakeham, the women's stories are told in an unsentimental way. 'I'm extremely proud to be involved in this…

Samuel alights by the side of a motorway. Lule and Yllke fly in with false papers. Sofia disguises herself as Rahim. Four unaccompanied refugee minors end up in the safe haven of a British B&B. But with trafficker boyfriends, debts to pay and Immigration disputing whether they're children at all, how many of them will…

A jarring, surreal, multimedia play looking through the locked keyhole of human trafficking; making visible and audible the unspeakable truth. One follows the number-crunching intellect of an Ivy League economics professor driven to publish her sabbatical research on entrepreneurship in global markets. Her life-changing…

'Lost Boy' is a powerful drama based on a story of modern child trafficking, lost identity and hope. Originally uncovered by the BBC, this story is now expertly retold with a diverse young cast. Born in Nigeria, Tola was brought to London and passed to a woman who he would come to call Auntie. Threatened with deportation…

Lyudmilla, a young inmate of a Siberian prison, competes in the annual prison beauty pageant in hopes of winning the coveted grand prize: parole. As she sews her costume and rehearses for the big day, Lyudmilla weaves together her dreams for the future with her memories of being trapped in the merciless web of the Moscow…

Following the sell-out success of 'Cruel and Unusual' and 'No Blacks No Jews No Dogs No Irish, All Welcome', Keith Farnan returns with a unique stand-up show exploring how we value or devalue the women in our lives. This year saw the Women's Movement celebrate its 40 year anniversary. It also saw a high-class escort…

Comments

I had the pleasure of catching 'Fair Trade' at Rich Mix for it's Edinburgh preview. Absolutely brilliant. I would highly recommend going to see it - not just because it makes light of a sensitive issue but because it is a fantastic piece of theatre.

I saw All The Queens Children in Reading....it was one of those rare times where I have been genuinely touched by a play - the juxtaposition between the gap-year travellers and the refugees couldnt have been more stark....The play was delivered with both humour and sadness in equal measures and although a distressing subject matter, was an enjoyable play-going experience. I would urge others to go and see it!